Discipline, maintenance, and survival

What I love about Gillian as a toddler: she talks more and more each day. 75% of what she says I'm still struggling to understand, and surely she is doing a lot of "practice" talking. But our communication capacities evolve and expand each day. And it's endearing and exciting.

I also love her messy bed head. Her silliness. The way she takes on the roles of others in the house, just trying them out. When I try to ignore her in bed and close my eyes to go back to sleep, she crawls up to me slowly, strokes my arms and neck, and softly goes "shhhhhhhh".

She plays the tattler, the victim, the pet manager, the daddy, the mommy, and the toddler - jumping from role to role with ease and delight.

Plus she smells so good.

But she needs constant maintenance in order to survive. She is always three steps away from killing herself; from falling out of tall chairs, from drinking dish detergent, from pulling sewing equipment down on top of herself.

And she is testing the waters and pushing the boundaries all day long. And it's so exhausting.

I read a lot of parenting blogs, and they all have advice: calm and gentle but firm words, logical consequences, a "yes touch" drawer to match every "no touch" one you establish.

But most times I find myself so rushed and so frustrated that I can't remember or execute any of them. (An argument for slowing down, which I'm exploring).

Lately, I've developed my own set of coping mechanisms. And although they work GREAT I think I'm setting myself up for major problems down the road.

Coping mechanism 1- PBS
      Gillian screams like a maniac and won't let me change her poopy diapers or get her dressed in the morning. My solution? I turn on PBS and she freezes for 10 minutes.

Coping mechanism 2 - Chocolate
     Gillian refuses to sit in her stroller, and we usually don't have time to let her walk to school with the girls in the morning. My solution? Chocolate chips. In fact, I spent a few weeks last month with a constant supply in my purse. In danger of a melt down when I put her in stroller/car seat/grocery cart? I would whip out a chocolate chip and voila! Silent and obedient.

Coping mechanism 3 - Boobs
     Despite my very best intentions, Gillian still nurses semi regularly. Now, it's usually first thing in the morning, maybe around naptime if I'm home, and then again at bedtime. But when we are out in public and she is sleepy and threatening a nuclear explosion and asking me for milk, I give in.
     When we are camping with non-parent human beings and she is in danger of crying ALL NIGHT LONG, I nurse her. ALL NIGHT LONG.

Potential consequences of my coping mechanisms?

An intellectually dull, uncreative, overweight grade schooler who is shunned by her classmates because she still nurses at age 7.

Tangly

Gillian's hair had become unmanageable. I knew I wanted to avoid the unfortunate mistake of cutting her bangs as they grew into her eyes (poor Bela and Mae suffered terrible haircuts at my hand). I have instead tried my hardest to pull her hair out of her face and sweep it up into a little ponytail on top.

But the back had gotten so long. It was beautiful and wavy, but - much like her budding personality these days - completely intolerable.

So we paid too much money for a few snips of the scissors yesterday, on a whim. I just couldn't get the ratty nest out of the back of her hair without suffering her 100th tantrum in 24 hours.

Much better..

The Sleer

Back in August, when we decided to drive a thousand hours and camp our way through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we knew we would need a lot of audiobooks to keep the kids occupied in the car.

Chris always picks good ones.

We spent the entire week listening to Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. I couldn't get enough. It was the perfect combination of creepy, odd, eccentric and fantastical, with a little gore mixed in.

Anyway, these few months later, the impression the novel left on little Mae smacked me right in the face.

Often, at school, they print the kids these take home books in black and white, minus illustrations. They bring them home several times to read to us, add some illustration, and then they disappear again.

This week's book was a Halloween treat, and today at school Mae got to illustrate it. She brought it home tonight to read to us (again) and I was impressed by her illustrations and wanted to record them here to share and to remember.

One of the creepier characters in the novel is the Sleer, the three headed snake-like monster who guards an ancient crypt for the "master"; who guards the master's three treasures: a bowl, a brooch, and a blade.

Mae's Halloween Book and her interpretation of The Sleer:

Page 1 - Her ghost in chains

Her Sleer! And the blade, the brooch, and the bowl (she mistakenly remembered the bowl to be coins)

I love these glimpses into her mental take-aways from the books we read and listen to.

marathon

It doesn't feel right to run so far and not say a word about it here.

So... I ran the marathon.

It was a beautiful day. Great weather, great friends, funny crowds. The first half was fast and pain free, but I started hurting at about mile 15 - weird achilles tendon pain I've never had before. Plus the running calluses I have on my big toes blistered underneath and stung like crazy.

I stopped only long enough to take my goos and water or gatorade in the first half, but started walking the length of the water stops after mile 19. Did a few desperate stretches in the middle of the road in the home stretch.

The only reason I made it across the finish line running was because I was minutes away from the 4 hour mark. My training times would have landed me a 4 hour and 20 minute marathon. My optimistic goal time was 4:10. But I've never run alone, so when I found myself coming in at under 4 hours, I really pushed it to keep it that way.

ouch.

Thanks to everyone who came out to cheer me on! Thanks to Chris for following me on that Divvy bike, and to Karen for running those 4 miles along the dead stretch from Pilsen to Chinatown to Bridgport - those barren roads sticky with gatorade and slippery with mashed banana and peels - a pretty comic food option for those last miles when your footing ain't so great anyway.

Thanks to Eric for hauling my girls around, thanks to my beautiful girls for going out to cheer me on, to the Kobayashi's for including us in their post race celebration (yay cake!)

It was such a wonderful day! I never want to do it again.

This moment

A moment from our week I'd like to share and remember. Happy friday.

blankie

Driving the gals around town yesterday afternoon to get a few things done, I happened to look back at a stoplight and see Gill grab a hold of Bela's blankie, stick her thumb in her mouth (which she rarely does), and take a deep long sniff.

Yes. At almost 9 years old, Bela still adores her blankie. I don't think she's gone a single night in her life without it. Crocheted by Aunt Joan over 8 years ago, it's looking a little faded and worn.

But she loves it. She loves it so much that her little sister Gillian wants to love it too. Of course, Gilli has her own blanket by Aunt Joan - she calls it 'bobby'. She doesn't suck her thumb and smell it, but she must have it cozied up to her neck before she can go to sleep.

And then there's Mae's. Mae is more flexible when it comes to her green blankie. She can, and has, gone without it lately. But she still loves it, still sucks her thumb at night, still smells it.

And what do these three bobbies smell like?

 I guess they smell a little bit like the life of three little girls. They smell  like their skin, their hair, their home, the food their mom cooks, the books that have taken up residence in their bed, their cats, their spit, their not-so-pleasant smells. All mixed up. All soft textures and warm feelings.

Happy Friday, all. Go cuddle up with something wonderful tonight. Something that smells a little bit like your whole life.

Another fan letter

August 2, 2013

Dear Mary Pope Osborne,

my name is Bela Strong I am eight years old.I love your magic tree house books mostly the magic tree house book when Teddy, Jack and Annie went to a castle with ghosts and a half man half raven tride to get a diemind from them. I am so upset with ghosts and silkies.

How do you make up such good stories? Did you know I look just like Annie? I have some questions to ask. How does Annie understand animals? What does good medicine mean?

YOUR GOOD FRIEND
Bela Strong

p.s please write back

family

I spent the day at the hospital today, with my mom and brother. He isn't doing so great, unfortunately. He's slated to undergo open heart surgery in a couple days, and if you would like to visit him send me an email and I'll give you details, as he's here in Chicago.

In the meantime, a few pictures of what very early mornings are like around here. Gill has been waking before the sun unfortunately, and I usually drag her into bed with me (and usually one sister or another). She knows how to bypass my security code on my iphone and get to the camera, and got these shots this morning that I think are pretty cool..

Here's to family. And wishing for the best.

Seance

For as little official time as we allow Bela on the computer, she is quite the Google expert. Lately, I've had a problem with finding her on my computer when she's not allowed to be. Basically, Monday through Friday, she can put on music and listen to audiobooks or maybe do some search for something with me by her side, but that's it.

I'm trying to teach her moderation, I'm trying to limit her screen time, and I'm trying to make my old laptop last as long as possible.

Today, after many days in a row of snapping the computer out of her hands, I found her behind the couch holding the lap top while she listened to audio books. I suspected she was googling or playing with Power Point or something. She denied.

As I cleaned up after dinner and sent the girls upstairs tonight,   I couldn't help but check out the browser history and spy on her.

Her searches?

How to buy minecraft. 
Minecraft secrets.
Minecraft minecraft minecraft.

But then?

Seance.
How to do a seance. 
Do seances work.
Seance.

Bela is upstairs right now reading a book about ghosts to Chris. Maybe I should join them and we should try out her new seance skills?

I got it covered

Chris likes to tell this story about his Mom: When he was younger, it never failed to thoroughly gross him out that she would manage her kitchen compost bin bare handed. After days of dumping egg shells and coffee grounds, potato peelings and rotting tomatoes, she could just reach in there up to her wrists and swish it around, smash it down, and scoop it up.

And while my following opinion is limited by my own personal experiences, I'm just going to go ahead and say that, when it comes to the gross parts of  kids, of domesticity, and of life, the Mom's have it covered. Am I right?

Take the other night. After more than a year without an infestation, I found a few nits on Bela. Now, this was after a long day of work, coming home to a chaotic and messy house full of kids needing to do homework and to eat a decent dinner, while lacking any other adult to help out because daddy was traveling again.

With the beautiful and miraculous help of my two older girls, we succeeded in making dinner, completing all the homework, putting the chickens in for the night, stripping  the beds, and washing the blankies, all while keeping tabs on the adorable but impossible Gillian Fern.

As I stepped over pellets of guinea pig poop that had been scraped out of the cage by my almost two year old, as I slipped through the pee that had sloshed out of her new and much adored (and FULL) potty, I stuffed my arms with towels, discarded clothing, jackets, and anything else that might need scalding to rid us of the nits.

I arrived to Gillian's closet and reached down with the last empty inch of my right hand to pick up a pair of crusty and nasty pajama pants she had deposited there on the floor, and discovered that my aging kitty Bronte, who completes 18 years on this planet come January,  had decided that that was the perfect place to poop.

I hesitated only a moment, I swear. I adjusted some of the things I was holding and, lacking any sort of tissue or paper, I reached down and grabbed the hard little pile. With my bare hands.

I'm almost certain that the guy I married--the one who throws up when he has to pick up dog poop with a doubled up plastic bag--will shudder when he reads this.